2023/2024 NHL/WILD Offseason-Season-Postseason Thread

Well boys

The nightmares are finally over

Foligno shutdown for the season, who’s next? I say Brodin or Middleton…

Kinda funny that most of the NHL sites incorrectly show the Wild with 80 points… the algorithms aren’t set to remove the tie point with the empty net against goal…

Hey, maybe this is GMBG’s plan for tanking?!? Name a better strategy than actually removing points from your season total!?! Genius!!!

I missed the end of the game so they pulled the goalie in OT again but got scored on? LOL

It was a pretty fun game overall from what I saw however. I thought Gus looked sharp again, KK was KK and actually Gaudreau and JoJo didnt look terrible. Pi$$ Missile almost had his first goal.

Think Hartman gets 5 games today?

JoeMX1825 wrote:

Think Hartman gets 5 games today?

I wish I saw what he did. I doubt it will be 5 though but throwing a stick at an official usually is more punishable than a dirty hit.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
Think Hartman gets 5 games today?

I wish I saw what he did. I doubt it will be 5 though but throwing a stick at an official usually is more punishable than a dirty hit.

he’s already been suspended for 2 games this season, so a second offense is usually more…

Well I would imagine more than 2 anyway, but 5 games, I doubt.

I bet Hartman asks for a few extra games on the suspension just to help them lose. Love the stealth tank moves by Hynes and Hartman.

Liam Ohgren heading to Iowa to finish up the season

JoeMX1825 wrote:

Liam Ohgren heading to Iowa to finish up the season

Like this a lot. Now do yurov.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
Liam Ohgren heading to Iowa to finish up the season

Like this a lot. Now do yurov.

I think he’ll wait and see if his team wins the KHL title (they start the semi-finals tomorrow) before making a decision to come over, if they win it, he has nothing to come back to the KHL for, if they don’t, that will be his excuse for staying in the KHL next year….

Russo also mentioned on his last podcast that the Yurov camp is supposedly asking for all of the top tier contract bonuses that Danila will NEVER meet, things like league top scorer, all star, etc…the pain point for the Wild is that all of those potential bonuses MUST be built into his cap hit in the rare occasion he does hit them, even though the likelihood he hits them is basically zero…so instead of him being a typical rookie $1.X caphit, he’ll be more like a $4+ million caphit on the books even though he won’t make that number…my guess though is that GMBG will explain this better to the Yurov camp and it gets worked out if he decides to come over now…

Hartman got 3 games…

I thought those performance based bonuses went against the following years cap and not in season.

CaptainMusky wrote:

I thought those performance based bonuses went against the following years cap and not in season.

I believe whatever bonuses total you have left to pay (after paying upto the current seasons cap max) rolls over and adds to the following season’s cap?

Russo explained that the ELC salary + full bonus potential total is what his caphit would be…. He said its extremely rare for rookies to even get those bonuses in their contract, the last to get it was Logan Cooley and that was just to help Arizona get to the salary cap floor so it really had nothing to do with Cooley…

Seems weird that bonuses would count against the cap if they haven’t even been achieved.

Read this: https://puckpedia.com/salary-cap/entry-level-performance-bonuses

A bonuses are worth $250k a piece and up to $1m max. B bonuses (unobtainable according to Russo) are worth $2.5m and it’s either all or nothing. Both numbers were lower for players drafted before 2022.

The amount of bonus in an ELC is negotiated and more or less tired to draft position Top 3 picks usually get full A and B bonuses so it’s not weird at all that Cooley got full bonuses. Russo speaking out of his butt there. Picks 5-15 get close to the full A bonus, but rarely the B. Then after that it’s pretty minimal, first rounders generally get partial A and 2nd and 3rd get very minimal. Special circumstances like Russians (khus) and college kids (Levi) will get prospects more bonus potential but those are very rare. Even then they still never get the B bonuses.

Russo saying Faber did the Wild a giant favor by not taking his full bonus potential is a joke. He was a mid 2nd rounder with no potential of holding out and going back to school. And it’s ironic because Faber would have achieved his “unobtainable” B bonus this year, worth $2m, and full A bonus, worth $850k. But players in his circumstance are never offered those bonuses so pretending like he did the team a favor just isn’t reality. Could he have pushed for maybe an extra $100k, sure probably.

I agree that Russo’s take on Brock doing the Wild a favor was just stupid (he even admitted at that by saying 2nd rounders rarely get offered the bonuses, but then went all in on his favor idea). He’s just pandering to both sides to stay in good graces for interviews…

I’m still hoping for $8.25 x 8, but I think it will be $7.5 x 7 to keep him under 30 when he becomes a UFA…

Good night for the tankometer. Flyers Islanders OT, Blues win, Kraken win, Wings win, Penguins win. Every team in this little 85-90 point pace bubble earned points tonight. With only 3 sure wins left on the schedule the Wild have a decent chance at a top 10 pick yet.

tswoboda wrote:

Good night for the tankometer. Flyers Islanders OT, Blues win, Kraken win, Wings win, Penguins win. Every team in this little 85-90 point pace bubble earned points tonight. With only 3 sure wins left on the schedule the Wild have a decent chance at a top 10 pick yet.

yeah its been that way lately, heck if the Sens win tonight, that would be 6 in a row and they would only be 7 points behind the Wild… a few weeks ago they had a top 5 pick…

Obviously you need to be in the bottom 11 to have the slim 3% chance at moving upto #1, but you really want to get into the bottom 8 to assure yourself one of the upper tier prospects…

Its funny that TSN still has the Wild with 80 points… they need to adjust their site code thats hardcoded to give 1 point for an OT loss…

We all know the Hawks are getting the #1 pick again dont we?

CaptainMusky wrote:

We all know the Hawks are getting the #1 pick again dont we?

13.5% chance, last year they had 11.5%

call me crazy (get in line) but I think if the Wild can get into the top 10 lottery, the friggin ping pong balls will finally fall their way and they will move up (i’m not saying 1st overall, just improve)…

Best Player Available should always be your pick in the 1st round (last year was more than enough proof of that for the Wild as we passed on Perrault for Stramel) but you gotta think Judd and company will have a slight pull towards getting a stud defenseman prospect to align with Spurgeon and Brodin eventually leaving…It’s also very likely the Wild trade 1 or 2 of the current Iowa Wild Defenseman this offseason as we don’t have room to play them all next season…

Lambos, Peart, Spacek, O’Rourke, Masters, Hunt, Johansson, Mermis, TBD Veteran XYZ

There’s 5 high level defense prospects in the top 10 this year…

BUT

Ivan Demidov is another “Yurov” type of prospect that will likely slip a bit due to the Russian factor…The Wild now has the Russian connections to where they are comfortable taking them…he would be a STEAL if he somehow slips to the Wild….

Tij Iginla (Jerome’s son) is another tempting prospect just from a good juju perspective based on how many goals his dad scored against the Wild getting paid back to us…

Sounds like the Wild is on the short list of teams Quinnipiac College Free Agent Collin Graff is interested in signing with… He’s got some size and is RH shot… not sure why he would sign with us though knowing the roadblock of veterans signed long term and the line of 1st & 2nd round prospects waiting in the wings…

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I agree that Russo’s take on Brock doing the Wild a favor was just stupid (he even admitted at that by saying 2nd rounders rarely get offered the bonuses, but then went all in on his favor idea). He’s just pandering to both sides to stay in good graces for interviews…

I’m still hoping for $8.25 x 8, but I think it will be $7.5 x 7 to keep him under 30 when he becomes a UFA…

Russo keeps saying “he’s getting $9m minimum” which if it’s exactly 8x$9m ok that’s fine, get the kid locked up. I think you start at $8×8 and go from there but don’t get to $10m. Power, Sanderson, and Heiskanen are the last 3 defenseman to sign big tickets off their ELC and all 3 took right around 10% of the cap, which would be $8.75 AAV this summer.

It would be a gamble but it’s worth considering waiting until after next season to sign an extension. Considerations are #1 do they plan on Faber running PP1 next season and #2 will Spurgeon be healthy next season. It was the perfect storm in terms of opportunity for Faber this year, and he absolutely crushed that opportunity. In the end I don’t think it’s worth the risk and would prefer they lock him up ASAP.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

call me crazy (get in line) but I think if the Wild can get into the top 10 lottery, the friggin ping pong balls will finally fall their way and they will move up (i’m not saying 1st overall, just improve)…

I was just looking at the prospect rankings and there are some interesting players this draft that I just think wow, it that kid develops…

For example, Russian D man Anton Silayev. All 6 foot 7, 207 pounds of him. And get this, he’s 17. There’s going to be a long development curve on this kid, but IF he gets the immaturity out of his game and gets consistent, then wow.

Joe, you’re totally right. Looking at consensus top 10, there are 4-5 D picks in there which seems to be a D heavy mix that high. Is this a good thing or a bad thing for the wild if we’re assuming we’d be in the top 10?

JoeMX1825 wrote:

call me crazy (get in line) but I think if the Wild can get into the top 10 lottery, the friggin ping pong balls will finally fall their way and they will move up (i’m not saying 1st overall, just improve)…

Best Player Available should always be your pick in the 1st round (last year was more than enough proof of that for the Wild as we passed on Perrault for Stramel) but you gotta think Judd and company will have a slight pull towards getting a stud defenseman prospect to align with Spurgeon and Brodin eventually leaving…It’s also very likely the Wild trade 1 or 2 of the current Iowa Wild Defenseman this offseason as we don’t have room to play them all next season…

Lambos, Peart, Spacek, O’Rourke, Masters, Hunt, Johansson, Mermis, TBD Veteran XYZ

There’s 5 high level defense prospects in the top 10 this year…

BUT

Ivan Demidov is another “Yurov” type of prospect that will likely slip a bit due to the Russian factor…The Wild now has the Russian connections to where they are comfortable taking them…he would be a STEAL if he somehow slips to the Wild….

Tij Iginla (Jerome’s son) is another tempting prospect just from a good juju perspective based on how many goals his dad scored against the Wild getting paid back to us…

Your crazy.

tswoboda wrote:

Power, Sanderson, and Heiskanen are the last 3 defenseman to sign big tickets off their ELC and all 3 took right around 10% of the cap, which would be $8.75 AAV this summer.

The difference with those 3 guys 8 year extensions is they keep them under 30 years old when they hit free agency…I know it’s just a single year or even months in some cases, but there’s this imaginary negative to being over 30 years old and signing a long term deal…same reasoning for Kirill and Boldy’s 5 & 7 year deals (Kirill’s 5 COULD have also been a safe guard by GMBG in the rare case he didn’t pan out after 55 games, but I can’t think of any other reason why Boldy didn’t take 8 years?)…That’s why I think the Faber camp wants a 7 year deal and because the Wild wouldn’t be buying out 1 extra free agent year, they should get a bit lower AAV deal ($7.5 ish)

I’ve also seen enough of Faber to where I wouldn’t be upset if they signed him over $8.5aav, especially if the Cap % is a big factor in the AAV, as the cap will jump another $8-10 million 2-3 years after this offseason…The Faber camp would want to sign asap and use this insanely good season as the reason why…as you point out, next season if Spurgeon and Brodin are healthy, Faber’s numbers likely dip a bit just due to spreading the icetime out a bit…